Pain's easiest salve
by nova A
Summary: Short Post-ep for No Humans Involved. Reflections on the SG dynamic (and Sophia) in season 5. Sara centered and Angst-tastic.


**Please read my Summary**!  
First let me request that you not hate me for this. It's a very short post-ep for No Humans Involved. The vibe I got from that episode was less than cheerful. In fact, it kinda pissed me off, and this fic reflects that. **I'm still G/S all the way**, but without a few emotional bumps, things wouldn't be interesting, would they?

**PS**- if anyone wants to start an **I Hate Sophia** fan club, please accept me as a charter member.  
**Disclaimer: **They're not mine. If they were, things would be different, believe you me. Please don't sue. I'm poor.

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"Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfill all the offices of death, except to kill."  
-John Donne

It used to be that Sara could stay up for days on end. The world would take on a surreal quality, colors too bright, sharp edges and echoing sounds. But she thrived on it, reveled in pushing herself too far, throwing herself at the work. Accomplishing. Besides, she was a chronic insomniac, and she usually couldn't sleep if she tried.

It's only recently that things have changed.

Now she goes home at the end of every shift and collapses into bed, exhausted. Her sleep is deep and long and dreamless, a total unconsciousness that she cherishes.The alarm always wakes her, and Sara drags herself thick and dizzy from bed, eyelids stuck shut as though with glue, to stagger into the shower and try to come back to life. She covers the bluish circles under her eyes with makeup. It's not only her sleep patterns that are different. She can't bring herself to eat much anymore. It's not a conscious decision; often the thought of food makes her mildly nauseous. She's always been thin, but now she's positively bony. Her size threes are loose. Probably because she has almost no body fat, she's perpetually cold. She's stopped bothering to fix her hair, just brushes it and goes. She feels pale, washed out, used up. She feels like a ghost, moving unnoticed and automatic through life.

Is this burnout? Grissom warned her about it once.

Grissom.

He doesn't seem to have a clue about what's going on. Grissom the grand observer, who sees everything except her. A part of her is glad. If he ever asked her about it, this negative transformation, Sara doesn't know what she would say. She doesn't know if she could discuss the dead little boy, thrown out like a piece of trash. The two brothers locked away forgotten in a filthy basement; a small strange body resting against hers, far too light, fragile bones showing through skin like dry parchment. She doubts she could talk about the child's warm trusting tears rolling down her neck, his quiet snuffling sobs of relief. The way the entire case has sent painful and all-too-familiar shock waves reverberating through her system. She isn't sure if she could ever bring herself to tell Grissom about her mother. It's the most personal subject she can think of.

And besides, Grissom won't ask. He's alternately engaged.

Sara watches him with Sophia Curtis, the new night shift CSI. Watches the way the woman slinks toward him, confident, eyes slitted like a cat's. The casual-sexy way she sits on his desk, leaning in his direction, and how he smiles back at her, expression bright with interest. For all her dramatic carefully worded claims of discomfort, Sophia has insinuated herself quickly into the night shift. She oozes her way around the office and into everyone's lives; Sara seems to see her perfect straight blonde hair everywhere, to hear her silky purring voice. Not long ago she would have hated this woman with a fiery passion. Now, to her own vague disappointment, all she can seem to muster are shallow feelings of dislike, bitter on the back of her tongue. She misses Catherine, and Warrick and Nick. She misses the team. They're all still there, of course, but it's not the same.

Ironically, it's Grissom she misses the most, though he's still her supervisor. They used to work so well together, before everything got all knotted up, messy and tangled with emotion. Now they haven't spoken, not really, in months. She misses that ease, the way they used to walk in step and finish each other's thoughts. And of course, sometimes she still allows herself the luxury of wondering what she would do if, magically, he ever told her he wanted her. If he kissed her, and pulled her body against his. If she were finally allowed to touch him.

But by now she has forced herself to become a realist. It's not going to happen. She's reached the conclusion that he just doesn't care. And honestly, she thinks that were he to come to her now, at this point in her life, she may just turn him away. He's hurt her so much, she doesn't know if she could get over it. Sara supposes this was what she was talking about, two years ago, when she told him that someday it would be too late. She knows that back then, a lifetime ago, he thought of her, too. She wonders if he still does, somewhere on the periphery of his daily considerations. She doubts it.

And so when she sees Grissom with Sophia, she doesn't really feel jealousy. Only flat resignation, as if a long-denied truth has finally been accepted. The blonde woman's body language is clear. She wants Grissom, and Sara knows him well enough to read that he probably feels the same way. He finds Sophia new and fascinating; her sophistication, her unorthodox methods. She's charming and suave in a way that Sara could never be. Sara stands stiffly in the door of Grissom's office; Sophia perches poised on his desk. Where Sara hesitates, Sophia charges in. Sara's feelings for Grissom often render her unable to speak; Sophia banters coquettishly. There's no comparison, and there's no denying it; Grissom seems to be moving on.

The burnout makes it easier to pretend she doesn't care.

Sara prints out copies of the files she has found on her mother, shoving them quickly into a manila envelope; she'll look at them later. She walks out of the lab, past Grissom's office. Sophia's sultry laughter follows her like a phantom down the hall, but she keeps her control and doesn't look back. She drives home slowly, paying close attention to the road to stave off the raw exhaustion that is beginning to tug at the edges of her consciousness. When she arrives at her apartment she shucks out of her plain, dark clothes, bundling herself into flannel pajamas and a fleece robe, thick socks. She sips at a mug of warm herbal tea with honey. Crawls sluggishly under the sheets, pulls her comforter up to her chin. With a sigh Sara lets her body go limp and her mind drift away. In sleep, at least, there is respite.


End file.
